Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

Nowadays, many corporate and business are using the efficient and effective services which provided by internet to introduce and running their business. One of the most popular tools that the corporate will use is corporate weblog. The purpose of the organization using weblog is mainly to reach their organization al goals. Corporate blogs can separate in two types which is the internet blog and external blog.

Internal blog is the weblog that provide to the employee and workers. Through the internal blog provide by the corporate, it will encourage the employee to participation, free discussion of issues, collective intelligence, direct communication between various layers of an organization and a sense of community.

On the other hands, an external blog is a publicly available weblog where organization employees, spokespersons to share their views or comments. It is often use by the corporate to update or announce new products, services, latest promotion, to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issues. Through blogging, it will allow a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press release. Corporate will try to accomplish similar goals or comment which state in the blog. Corporate blog can collect many valuable information from public or global readers about the feedback on exclusive previews, product testing, marketing plans, customer services, etc. Besides that, corporate can interact with a target market on a personal level while building link credibility that can tied back to the corporate web site.

Advantages of the Corporate Blog :-

1. Ease of publishing – the content of corporate blog and corporate website can be a big different. A blog can allow us to bring information and the latest news of the corpaorate to the public much faster and upadated than traditional website. Public will more interesting to understand and checking the latest information through corporate blog rather than websites.

2. Cost of making and maintaining is lower – To develop a corporate website, it need many graphic designers, usability experts, and it will cost much longer time and high cost. In contrast, blog can structure and restructure the corporate information in many different ways with the lower maintaining cost.

3. Community Building – There are a main different between blog and a “normal” website.Blogs will provide the ability to build a community and to interact with your reader more easily. People can interact with the organization each other through comments and out-of-the-box widgets of the blog.

4. A sense of forgiveness and tolerance – Anything published on a corporate website need to be more careful and must confirm don’t have any error before published it. It is because errors are often taken seriously by those who read. In contrast, as blogs have grown out of the personal sphere, blogs will have more an air of tolerance, of forgiveness.
Disadvantages of the Corporate Blog :-

1. Time consuming activity – Blogging is the time consuming activity, it need to keeping the content fresh and updated. The company need to spend more time to always renew it.

2. Legal and privacy concern – Some of the competitor or some reader who always like to make trouble on other people will purposely leave a bad comment and or bad suggestion on the blog to try to destroy the goodwill of the corporate.


others sources:
http://www.conversationagent.com/2008/02/corporate-blogs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog
http://www.globalprblogweek.com/archives/how_to_launch_a_corp.php
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/article.php/3547411

E-learning offered in Malaysian universities: Pros and Cons from the students perspective

E-learning is an essential for network-enabled transfer of skills and knowledge. It is a type of Technology supported education or learning which using the internet or an intranet/extranet, audio or video tape, satellite TV, and CD-ROM to deliver the content. E-learning applications and processes includes web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual classrooms and digital collaboration. E-learning was first called "Internet-Based training" then "Web-Based Training".

Universiti Teknologu Malaysia (Technological University of Malaysia) is the oldest public engineering and technology university in Malaysia. Before this, in year (1904-1941) it was named as Technical School , in year (1942-1945) was named as Shihan Gakko, in year (1955-1971) was named as Technical College, in year (1971-1975) was named as Institut Teknologi Kebangsaan. After having a long times journey, finally the university was completed and became Universiti teknologi Malaya (UTM) on the 1st of April 1975. UTM main campus was in Skudai, Johor and the branch campuses was in Kuala Lumpur. UTM provide various types of education program, and focus in technical studies, with separate faculties for Education, Pure Sciences, Management, and HRD. The major source of graduate engineers and similar professionals are come from UTM. Since year 1990, the number of foreign students which from Asian countries, Middle East, and Africa, has been increasing. Most of the UTM graduates have involved themselves on many academic and professional institutions across the world. UTM vision is to be a worlds class university by the year of 2010.

On the other hands, UTM was providing e-Learning for the studies. E-learning in UTM can be defined as “the application of ICT to advance the effectiveness of the learning process” (UTM, 2005). By using this system, course content, lecture notes, communication tools, quizzes, tests and assignments can be accessed through the university computer network.

The pros of E-learning
1. No time and far distance spent to travelling to campus – Students of the university came from the whole state and whole country of Malaysia, the campus are very far for some student to come and attend class. Besides, some students need to work so they don’t have much time to spend to go campus study. With the e-learning, student no need spent many time and travel long distance to go campus but can study through access the university network easily and efficietly.

2. All Student is 100 treated fair and equal – By learning through the web, our work will stand merit alone, and we not be treated differently based upon race, sex, creed, sexual orientation, religion and disability.

3. Additional benefits of learning through E-learning – Study by using e-learning can provide students learning new technologies and practicing the use of the internet, office software and having more knowledge in IT than other face to face lecture’s student.

The cons of E-learning
1. Lack of face-to face interaction – By study using e-learning, student and lecturer seldom meet each other. This happen especially in self-paced course. So it was difficult in developing the relationship with classmate.

2. Expensive study’s equipments are requite – By study through internet, student need to spent a large amount to buy the personal laptop or pc, licensed office software and internet online. It will increased the financial burden of the parent.

3. Self-motivated and disciplined are important – Without face to face interaction, student must be more self-motivated and disciplined to progress through their program in a timely manner. If not, student will getting more and more lazy and get worse on their studies.


Further sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universiti_Teknologi_Malaysia
http://www.elearners.com/resources/elearning-faq5.asp
http://eprints.utm.my/5948/1/e_Learning_Implementation_in_Malaysian_Universities_The_UTM_Experience.pdf

E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen’s adoption strategies

Electronic Government is a diffused neologism used to refer to the use of the information and communication technology to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses and other arms of government.

For benefits of e-government, please click below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Government#Benefits

Current applications of e-government in Malaysia:

Employees Provident Fund Malaysia: http://www.kwsp.gov.my/index.php?lang=en

One of the government departments which is providing e-government services is EPF Malaysia. EPF Malaysia has been upgrading it services from traditional brick and mortar channel to online services and intends to move away from the traditional brick and mortar business to strengthen its efficiency. To make the services convenient for citizens, to be an effective and efficient corporate, we have to move away from just opening more branches and extending the operating hours. The advancement of technology nowadays is enabled us to look at providing the means for citizens to access the services provided “anywhere, anytime, and anyhow”.
EPF has increased its online services to offer an alternative channel for citizen to conduct their EPF transactions. This will help to ease the queues at counters and also allow who visit the service counters a speedier rate of service. The online services will enable citizen to access information at their convenience.
Thus in certain aspects, citizens are empowered to monitor what is happening to their EPF savings as often as they want. Online services will reduce or eliminate the need for anyone to use his precious time to visit service counters, endure the traffic and spend time and money on parking or public transport. People who only need to do simple enquiries such as checking the balance of their EPF savings or withdrawal application status will appreciate this online services.
Online services will greatly benefit not only to those who come to the service counters but also those who are not free or too busy to visit the service counters. Online services also enable customer service personnel to provide efficient and quality service.
Besides, citizens will able to better save their time by downloading and printing EPF forms online as well as their statements when they wish.


Ways to encourage more citizens to use e-government application:












a) Enhance the awareness of public about E-government. Government may enhance the awareness of citizen through mass communication such as newspaper, TV advertisement and radio to build up the awareness of citizen.

b) The benefits of using E-services get to know to the public. Educate citizens about e-government. Enhance the usage of online transactions by telling the benefits of using e-government services, but, the security issues must be educated.

c) Assurance of services and qualities provided. Government could grant the services provided are always at high level of satisfaction.

Review a local e-commerce site

Mudah.my : http://www.mudah.my/
One of the local e-commerce websites in Malaysia is Mudah.my. Mudah.my is a Malaysian marketplace for buying and selling online. The philosophy behind this site lies in its name, which is convenient. Consumers can conveniently buy and sell on Mudah.my anytime and anywhere. People can easily buy and sell through this website where its product category include property, car, mobile phone, computer, clothes, or just anything else. With mudah.my, we can buy and sell basically everything and find cars for sale, houses for sale, mobile phones for sale, and computers for sale in our region conveniently.

Descriptions of mudah.my:

a) Electronic catalog: http://www.mudah.my/li?ca=9_s&th=1
mudah.my using electronic catalog to promote and advertise their wide range of products and services. Electronic catalog consist of a product database, directory and search capabilities, and a presentation function. They are the backbone of most e-commerce sales sites.

b) Search engine: http://www.mudah.my/li?ca=9_s&cg=3020
It is a computer program that used to access databases of Internet resources, search for specific information of keywords, and report the result.

c) Site design and layout of mudah.my: http://www.mudah.my/
The design and layout of mudah.my are simple, efficient and attractive. It can be easily seen by users and not complicated.

d) Customer service: http://www.mudah.my/support.htm?ca=9_sca=9_s
From here, users can find use few ways to contact the personnel of mudah.my. Within the customer service’s site, users can find answers to the most frequently asked questions and some of the general information regarding mudah.my.

e) Navigation and others: http://www.mudah.my/li?ca=8_s&th=1
Links are provided for ease to use, viewers can scroll down to the bottom of the webpage and look for the link which they’re interested in.

f) Customization: Customization of products and services in mudah’s site. The classifications for products to sale and products wanted are separately assigned in different web page.

g) Banner advertising: http://www2.mudah.my/support/form/0?ca=9_s&id=14
Mudah.my is offering the space for those who wanted to advertise their products or brand with low charge.